Daria Plus
by Smileyfax
Summary: After graduating Lawndale High School, Daria discovers the universe is a video game, one she has just beaten. Seeing no other path, she reluctantly starts 'New Game Plus' mode, allowing her to relive life at Lawndale with full knowledge of the future, as well as the true nature of the world. Hijinks abound.
1. Chapter 1

"You know that thing I said about you getting soft?"

"Yeah?"

"I take it back."

Clink.

Daria blinked. "What the hell?" she said aloud.

She was in a formless void, black as far as the eye could see. She could still clearly see herself, which was strange (where was the source of the light?), and she was standing on SOMEthing. She tried kneeling down and poking it, but whatever it was, it was inflexible, and room temperature.

She turned around. "No. Fucking. Way."

Floating in the air were the words "Lawndale High: The Game". Beneath it floated more words - New Game, New Game Plus, Achievements, Options, Quit.

"Well, New Game implies I want to plunge back into hell, so..." She approached Quit, but as she did so, weakness suddenly overcame her. She didn't quite collapse, but her muscles were slow to move her, and intense chills were running up and down her body. When she actually reached her hand up to touch the floating words, great shooting pains began to wrack her body, and at once she threw herself away from the word, scrambling away until her body returned to normal. "Okay, I guess hell has some benefits," she murmured to herself. She craned her neck around, wondering if Jane had somehow ended up here. "Yeah, I guess it does," she said with resignation, finding the void truly empty of anyone else.

She stood back up and evaluated the other menu items. She tried Options next, and to her relief touching it evoked no adverse physical reactions. The menu itself was pretty barebones - sound options (muting sound made her voice go away - creepy), video options (everything was already maxed out, and her experiments with lowering the settings just made her eyes worse, it seemed), language settings, and so forth. The only intriguing item of note was Violence Settings, which was set at minimal. Increasing it to Ultra produced no obvious effects, so Daria left it on that setting.

Her next foray was the Achievements menu. To her annoyance, she saw that most of the cheevos were still locked. Of the handful she'd unlocked, she saw that one of them was the Diane Fossey Award for Beating the Game, making her roll her eyes. Another cheevo, Good Times, signified her discovery of the...secret level...Holiday Island High. "Well, that explains a lot," she remarked. She'd also gotten cheevos for beating the game without leveling up and for beating the game without killing anybody (WHAT), but that was it.

She closed the Achievements menu and wandered over to the first two items on the main menu. After speculatively eyeing both options, she elected for New Game Plus. She may still only be a level one character, but she had to have improved some areas of her person in the two-ish years she'd attended Lawndale High. She placed her hand on the New Game Plus, and...

"Girls, I just want you to know your mother and I realize it's not easy moving to a whole new town - especially for you, Daria, right?"

Daria blinked away confusion as her father waited for a response. "Uh, yeah," she said, too caught off-guard by the sudden transition to remember what she'd initially said.

Her father laughed as if what she'd said was funny. "I'm just saying you don't make friends as easily as...uh, some people."

"You mean like Quinn?" Daria pointed out bluntly.

Jake frowned as he reached to turn off the radio (after it had been turned up seconds earlier by Daria's sister). "That's not what I meant...necessarily."

Daria vaguely remembered he had some more words of wisdom to offer, but decided to switch things up. After all, what was the point of playing again if she was going to do the same thing twice? "Well, if I don't make friends as easily as Quinn, doesn't that mean the move was easy on me, since I didn't have any friends to leave behind?" The look on her father's face as his mouth moved without any words coming out was gold.

The car had pulled up to good ol' Lawndale High, prompting Quinn to hop out and begin mingling with the natives. Daria decided to follow suit, skipping anything else her father might have said.

"Quinn Morgendorffer," Quinn said to the future Fashion Club, introducing herself.

Daria decided to switch things up a little more and gave Quinn a hard shove.

The words *CRITICAL HIT* appeared in flashing red above her sister's head. The look of shock on her face was priceless as she fell in front of her father's car. The car hadn't been moving very fast, which made what happened next all the crazier.

Quinn's body exploded. Her head sprayed bits of bone and blood and brain matter all over the windshield, the eyes flying out like escape pods. Her arms and legs tumbled off as if they'd only held onto her torso with magnetic force, albeit magnets didn't spray out more blood as they landed on the asphalt and sidewalk. And the torso itself somehow got launched and smacked Sandi Griffin square in the face, covering her in blood and a horrified look.

Everybody turned to Daria. "I guess that's what the Ultra setting does," she said aloud.

That's when the screaming started.

Daria quickly found herself under arrest. The trial was swift: she was tried as an adult and sentenced to the rest of her life in prison. As she was led away from the courthouse, everything once again faded to black.

*ACHIEVEMENT UNLOCKED: MY SISTER'S KEEPER*  
-Kill your sister.

*ACHIEVEMENT UNLOCKED: FIRST BLOOD*  
-Make your first kill.

*ACHIEVEMENT UNLOCKED: GAME OVER*  
-Lose the game.

XXXXXXXXXX

Every now and then while browsing through Harry Potter fanfic (or, if I'm feeling nostalgic, Buffy fanfic), I'll come across a tale that sets the series' frameworks within a videogame, as well as making the protagonist fully cognizant that they are a video game character (and therefore able to exploit the game's mechanics to hilarious, overpowered effect). The concept is an intriguing one, especially since I typically indulge myself with as much min-maxing in video games as I can get away with.

There is something of the DNA of my old unfinished tale Daria Unscripted in this, I think. DU had some interesting ideas, but I never really had more in mind than "Daria gets stuck in some crazy time loop for some reason and tries (and fails) to make the best of it". This way, I think, is more structured and there's an actual reason for the time loop.

If you're interested in other fics along these lines, I suggest Harry Potter and the Natural 20. It's not quite "Harry Potter is suddenly a video game", more along the lines of "A powergamed PC from Dungeons and Dragons ends up in Hogwarts and turns the status quo on its ear", and is immensely enjoyable. 


	2. Chapter 2

Daria walked out of Mrs. Manson's office, deep in thought. Having nothing better to do, she'd once again plunged into New Game Plus, and this time toed the line to her memories of the initial playthrough. (She wondered what to make of the fact that she had memories stretching back through childhood, when the game only followed the events of her years at Lawndale). Things had gone like usual until Mrs. Manson brought out the ink blots, at which point tutorial messages had popped up, freezing the world at large and giving her more insight as to how she was meant to interact with the universe now.

She'd been introduced to her character sheet and told how to navigate it. Her Stats went from 1-10 each, the most notable of her Stats being Intelligence at 8 and Charisma at 1. (Daria had rolled her eyes at that information). She had a Trait, Manifesto, which apparently switched out her Persuasion skill for her Writing skill if the latter was higher and she prepared something written. (She was sure she'd be making full use of that in the course of events, since her abysmal Charisma meant serious penalties to Persuasion). Of her other Skills, the only ones she had anything over the minimum in were Academics and...Firearms? Daria chalked that latter up to experiences at Highland and on the paintball excursion.

Interestingly, she also had two Perks - License to Drive and High School Diploma, both relics of her previous playthrough. License to Drive was useful, but High School Diploma offered greater job options right from the word go and - this interested Daria the most - the opportunity to go into higher education. If she could actually skip attending Lawndale all over again, this might not be so bad.

On the other hand...as she had been browsing her skills, she'd seen a page labeled 'Magic'. Now THAT was something she was intensely curious about, but when she'd attempted to look at it, the interface had denied her, saying she had to complete Quest: Befriend Andrea and Quest: Discover Andrea's Secret before she could do anything on that page. She had a feeling that she (or her player, or whatever) had missed out on a lot on that first playthrough, so it might be worth it to stick around.

After the personality test, Dr. Manson had given Daria a hall pass letting her go to Mr. DeMartino's class, which gave her another tutorial on the inventory system. She was treated to a view of herself, arms stretched out to the side, which she guessed allowed her to equip herself without having to bother with actually putting on or removing clothes. She had a carrying capacity of 100 pounds, and as far as she could tell anything she picked up simply stopped existing in the 'real world' until it left her inventory. She saw she had nearly $5,000 to her name, which she figured was from her Montana Cabin Fund in the previous playthrough and would make a good start for her current playthrough. (Money had no weight, which made Daria wonder how loosely money was defined...could she pick up a bar of gold bullion and have it directly translate to her cash reserves? She'd love to arrange a trip to the nearest federal reserve).

She stopped outside the history classroom, looking inside. She saw Jane, and suddenly felt very emotional over the lost friendship. Sure, she could (and most likely would) attempt to start a new friendship with her, but it just wouldn't really be the same. And even if she forged a strong friendship with the artist once more, it would once again be washed away the next time the game ended.

Daria turned away, having no more stomach for school that day. She decided to get down to the business of using her years of experience with video games to exploit the hell out of this one. Her first order of business would be walking down to Happy Herb's ("with a few thousand bucks", a memory of Trent sang in her head) and get a car. And...maybe a gun. This was a game after all, and she suspected that of all the content she'd missed the first time around, not all of it would be peaceful.

*ACHIEVEMENT UNLOCKED: S.O.S., GIRL OVERBOARD*  
-Quit the tutorial.

XXXX

Jane looked away from Mr. DeMartino upon seeing movement outside the classroom door. Was that Daria standing out there? Jane wondered what she was doing, and raised an eyebrow in curiosity as her friend just walked away. 'Blowing off class, Morgendorffer?' Jane thought to herself. 'So unlike you. Wish I'd thought of that.' She smirked and turned her attention back to the lecture on the American West. 


End file.
